Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has unveiled a chart claiming Obama has increased debt only 16%. This is a total lie. She uses distorted numbers that when compared to real data that turn out to be bogus.

A reader recently pointed us to a post on the website of MoveOn.org, a liberal group. The post features a bar graph titled, “Who Increased the Debt?” that offers figures for the past five presidents:

Ronald Reagan: Up 189 percent
George H.W. Bush: Up 55 percent
Bill Clinton: Up 37 percent
George W. Bush: Up 115 percent
Barack Obama: Up 16 percent

[....]

nder Clinton: Increase of $1.54 trillion, or 37 percent
Under George W. Bush: Increase of $4.899 trillion, or 86 percent
Under Obama: Increase of $3.661 trillion, or 34 percent

So we can dispense with Clinton — in the chart, his figure is correct. But the chart is significantly off for both Bush and Obama. We found Bush to have an 86 percent increase, not 115 percent as the chart said. And we found the debt under Obama to be up by 34 percent, more than double the 16 percent cited in the chart.

We quickly discovered the source of the discrepancy: Whoever put the chart together used the date for Jan. 20, 2010 — which is exactly one year to the day after Obama was sworn in — rather than his actual inauguration date. We know this because Treasury says the debt for Jan. 20, 2010, was $12.327 trillion, which is the exact number cited on the supporting document that Pelosi’s office gave us.

[....]

Debt vs. debt as a percentage of GDP: Some economists will tell you that it’s not the size of the debt per se, but rather the size of the debt relative to the nation’s gross domestic product. This helps minimize the complicating effect of economic cycles and inflation. So how do those numbers stack up? Using OMB statistics, here’s what we came up with, using public debt figures not adjusted for the president’s time in office:

Reagan: Up 14.9 percentage points
George H.W. Bush: Up 7.1 percentage points
Clinton: Down 13.4 percentage points
George W. Bush: Up 5.6 percentage points
Obama: Up 21.9 percentage points (through December 2010 only)

As always Progressive manipulate data to create their facts. However, when one uses real calculations, Nancy Pelosi’s lie gets exposed. As a percentage of GDP, Obama’s has accumulated more debt that George W. Bush. This is an inconvenient truth.

Tags: Budget deficit, Debt Crisis, Nancy Pelosi, Public Debt

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 21st, 2011 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Democratic Party, Economy, Liberal Fascism, Progressives, Special Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.